Peter Rockwell (“’Centralizing power letter’ misleading,” Yuma Sun, January 17, 2012) is correct, of course!  The Republicans have been the war mongers of the 20^th century.  Take WWI, for example, 117,000 American casualties, and 12 million people worldwide.  Oh, wait a minute, that was Wilson, wasn’t it?  Well, take WWII then, 1 million American casualties, 19 million worldwide.  Oh, wait.  Wrong again.  That was FDR, another Democrat.  The Korean War was Truman’s (130,000 casualties) and Vietnam the Kennedy-Johnson affair (211,000 casualties). 

                I better quit being so “lazy and downright manipulative.”  Whether for good or ill I know not, but Republican administrations have gotten us involved in the Middle East killing 100,000 Iraqis and causing 120,000 American casualties.

                 Maybe the wars were not justifiable, but the constitution does give the federal government power to conduct war.  Our military is pretty good at that. It is also the constitutional responsibility of the federal government to protect our borders. It is not constitutional for the federal government to employ 2.5 million people to interfere in the affairs of the 50 states and manage our personal lives.

                I thought I made it clear in the first paragraph of my original letter that I was not distinguishing between Republicans or Democrats.  We have had many progressive Republicans who have led us down the big government path, and there are many Democrats in both the house and the senate who would restrain the federal government.

                 President Obama would have us believe it was the Tea Party Patriots in the House who practically shut down congress; however, even when Democrats controlled all three branches they could not agree on a budget.  Harry Reed wouldn’t bring to the senate floor the 15 budget proposals that the 112^th congress sent up because he knew that the more classically liberal Democrats would support them and they might pass. 

                 Our founders knew the danger of a large intrusive federal government.  Benjamin Franklin said, “We have given you a republic if you can keep it.”  We have not kept it very well.  We have spent our progeny into servitude.   We have a federal government that, sometimes with the best intentions, wants to use its power to solve problems and in the process corrupts itself by currying favors and buying votes. 

                  "To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." -Thomas Jefferson

             “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” - John Adams

Getting where we need to be

      My friend Paula said, “God has a way of getting us to the place we’re supposed to be.”  The idea struck a chord with me and caused me to reflect on the way in which God has worked in my life.

       After my husband died, our house on Vancouver Island, the home I had loved almost ejected me. For some odd reason,  I just couldn’t be there, so I made my permanent home in a small trailer house which was our winter home in Yuma. If I was to be a year arounder, I needed a church.  My first Sunday here I cruised up and down Avenue A and 8^th Avenue at about 8:15, and service at Trinity Methodist started at 8:30.  I had been Lutheran all my life, so I had no intention of making that my home, but I accidentally sat behind Marilyn Young. She was so welcoming that I came back and got stuck.

       Two years ago my daughter Lynne stayed with me for a couple of months while she was getting dental work done in Algadonas, and it just seemed right that she should stay, but two women in a house need two bathrooms. We just happened onto a place in Saguaro Estates with  a bedroom and bath at either end. 

        But I see now that it was not accidetal,  none of this “just so happened.”  God was getting me to the place I needed to be.  He saw the terrible road that Lynne was going to travel, and he knew that we would have to be in a park with year-rounders who would support us and pray with us throughout the terrible summer, neighbors like Joyce who would encourage their churches like her Community Chriustian Church to keep us in their prayers or like Joan whose church warmLynne’s heart with a beautiful Prayer quilt. He knew that we needed a congregation like those at Trinity Methodist who would understand and treasure who Lynne was and who would wrap their arms around us and keep us strong. 

        My daughter is gone now, but she knew she was loved, she knew that she had made a difference. Many of  those knew her will make the commitment that she made.  “I will keep Jesus forever in my heart and not fail to record all my blessings.”

Progressivism: Suffering the consequences of our own best intentions.

       The reason progressivism is difficult to define (Vincent Lacy, “Progressives place nation before politics,” Yuma Sun, December 19, 2011) is that progressives take on different issues over time.  Whether right or left, Democrat or Republican, a progressive is one who believes that government can solve problems.  Progressives have an earnest desire to remake the world into something that resembles their more utopian vision.

       Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican Progressive. He objected to the laissez-faire free market philosophy of his predecessors and started the 20^th century march toward a more intrusive federal government.  He destroyed monopolies, established the FDA, and passed laws regulating workplace safety and establishing a minimum wage.

       Today’s liberal Democrats have assumed that mantel of turn of the century progressivism.   They have faith in the ability of a strong central government to reorder society and industry, stabilize, rationalize, and expand the apparatus of the state in order to achieve what they consider a more fair and just society. 

Conservative Republicans, interestingly enough, have adopted the philosophy of what was classic liberalism, committed to the ideal of limited government and respect for the constitution and individual liberties. Although we are concerned with budget deficits and adamant about not leaving our progeny with outlandish debts, we are more concerned with how the “nanny” state destroys individual initiative and undermines personal and civic responsibility. 

                Although not all conservatives are religious, they agree with at least one of principles espoused in the Old Testament, that power should not be centralized.  God confused the languages of the people who built the Tower of Babel in order to disperse them, decentralize them, recognizing the fact that, although capable of much that is good, collectively, we are also capable of hideous evil.   The millions Hitler sent to the gas chambers, the millions intentionally starved by Stalin, the millions slaughtered by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, as well as a myriad of similar socialist/communist regimes make that fact absolutely inarguable.  All of them were earnest in their desires to create a better society.

         Our founders were committed students of history and philosophy and after struggling mightily over issues of sovereignty, devised a system of government designed to prevent the consolidation of power and respect individual liberties and responsibilities.  They hoped to save us from the consequences of our own best intentions.  

Bernd Rogat: When you need them angels just appear.

My husband emigrated from Germany when he was 20 years and I have a dozen diaries about his adventures in the new world.  Later, he taped his diaries in English, and they are a hoot, alive with the guy Sig was.  My son enjoyed them much and last spring told me he’d pay whatever it cost to get the diaries translated.  While I searched the web to find translators, I thought of Bernd Rogat, a man who attended our church during the winters when he was in town.  I knew that he had come from the same area of Germany as my husband and thought he’d be a good contact, but I hadn’t seen him in church and since the winter season was nearly over, I assumed Bernd, who camped in the shade of a Palo Verde tree, had already escaped the heat.

               But he hadn’t.  The next Sunday, there he was.  At the post-church coffee gathering I told him I had a job for him.  He said he’d be glad to give it a try. He did some of the translation and he also did some painting and maintenance jobs for me.   I paid him by the hour, but it wasn’t long before he had earned enough money to get out of the heat, so he left for San Diego.

               In the meantime, my daughter had been dealing with some mysterious health problems. In June, an emergency room visit led to a long hospital stay and many tests, but no definitive results. They needed to do a pet scan which could not be done while she was in hospital, so I took her home. Home care would provide a hospital bed, but to make room, I had to get the bedroom cleared out.  I was about to call for help when the phone rang. 

               It was Bernd.  “Mrs. Schingnitz, I did a stupid thing.  I came back to Yuma -  in July.  I cannot believe it.  How stupid.  I simply have to get out of this heat.”  When he left I had told him that I had more jobs for him if he ever wandered this way again.   He hoped he could do those jobs now and earn enough to get him back to San Diego.  I picked him up from his camping spot and he helped me clear out the room, and in the process, tenderly attended to my daughter who was dehydrated and couldn’t keep anything in her stomach.  He gently cleaned her up, replenished her ice water, brought her damp cloths to clean her face and cool her and pillows to rest her head.  He seemed to anticipate, better than I, what she needed.

               I told him that I had an extra room and asked him if he would stay to help me out.  He did.  It was a grueling time, and Bernd knew how to be helpful in every way. My daughter had suffered a traumatic brain injury 25 years before and most people could not see beyond her slurred speech and ungainly movements.  Bernd recognize her value and respected her intelligence. He talked her through a lot of pain and made her laugh. One time he said, “Here comes your medication flying in on the wings of an eagle named Bernd Rogat.”  I thought, “No, on the wings of an angel,” and that he was.

 They read the Bible and discussed philosophy.  He transported her beyond the pain by reading “Dead Souls” to her.   It sounds gruesome, but that Bernd’s interpretation managed to capture the author’s unique sense of humor, much to Lynne’s delight.  

               In July we finally got a diagnosis, internal melanoma, an aggressive incurable form of cancer.  She did qualify for clinical trials at the cancer center in Tucson, but by the time we got it arranged she had had two more trips to the emergency room and the disease was way out of control.  The doctors agreed that she might have 3 weeks to live and recommended that we spend the time to her delight.  She decided on Hawaii, much to Bernd’s delight because his son lived there. 

               We soon, learned, however, that a trip by airplane was out of the questions, so we opted to spend some time on the San Diego beach instead.  Bernd was terribly disappointed, but I had paid him well, so he had enough money for a plane trip for himself.  I later contacted his sister in New York, but she hadn’t heard from him.  She didn’t think he made it because his son had been in contact with her and hadn’t mentioned it. 

               Yesterday I leaned that he had indeed made it to Hawaii.  I wept tears of joy.  He must have followed his own advice.  “One must be shod with the gospel of peace and wear the helmet of salvation, the breast plate of righteousness,  the belt of truth, the shield of faith, and the sword of the Word of God.”

               I know that he has searched for peace for many years.  I pray that he found it.

Why do atheists care?

I sincerely hope I can elicit a response from Gilbert Shapiro on two issues: (“Prayer ruling not based on merit,” Yuma Sun, January 5, 2012). First of all, with regard to the separation of church and state in the constitution, if the framers were so adamantly opposed to prayer and the practice of religion on government property, why do they open both the senate and the house with a word of prayer every morning?  Why have we established clerics not just in the two houses of government, but also in the pentagon in order to “meet the spiritual needs” of those working in there”?  

From the time the capitol was established until long after the reconstruction period, religious services representing a variety of beliefs were held in the capitol building every Sunday morning.  It was Jefferson who wrote the famous letter containing the "wall of separation between church and state" phrase, but Jefferson himself attended those Sunday morning services.  He also wrote a version of the New Testament that, until about 1917, was distributed to every freshman class of representatives and senators. 

The framers assiduously avoided establishing a religion, but they believed profoundly that we were endowed by our “Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”  The justification of the Declaration of Independence is that no government should have the power to violate those rights because, and I repeat, “they were endowed by our Creator.” In time of crisis they called for days of prayer and fasting. They believed that without our reliance on Devine providence, this great country would not survive. (http://coraleeannmoen.blogspot.com/2011/07/were-our-founders-men-of-faith-based.html). 

Perhaps Article XX of the Arizona constitution could be interpreted as directly prohibiting prayer at the State Capitol, but that leads to me to the second issue that I sincerely hope you will clarify.  Why do atheists care?

 It does takes a little time to say a prayer, but those congressmen and women waste a whole lot of time on a lot of foolishness. I doubt that there is much of an investment of capital and certainly not as much as the $2,351 they spent underwriting the production of “Abraham Lincoln’s Big, Gay Dance Party.”

I don’t think it’s really a matter of time or money, so again I don’t understand.  Why do they care?  A Google search suggested it was because atheists are not allowed in Boy Scouts.  I didn’t know that.  Some felt that religious people “are intolerant, hate filled, bigoted.”

 Many of them expressed their fear of religious wars, citing the millions murdered over the years in the name of one religion or another.  Interesting because my reading of history tells me that perhaps 100 times as many have been killed by atheist regimes,  the Third Reich, by Stalinist Soviet Union, Poll Pot, Communist China.   

Again the question:  Really, why do they care?   Were I an atheist, I am pretty sure I would just sit back and giggle at the silliness of it all. Let them waste their time sitting in uncomfortable pews and singing hymns.  Why does our prayer make them so uncomfortable?

George McGovern's Wake-up Call

In 1980 George McGovern lost his bid for the presidency and then a fourth term in the senate and returned to South Dakota deciding to open a bed and breakfast. It was then that one of Washington's leading progressives learned something about government.  He said, “I wish that during the years I was in public service I had had this first-hand experience about the difficulties business people face.”  While jumping through the hoops and wading through 100,000 pages of regulations, some of which he himself had helped to create, he realized that our government had become an anti-business colossus. 

We assume that our founders created the constitution to protect us from evil, from bad government, from corruption. It was also designed to protect us from our own best intentions.  The founders had the foresight to understand how a government’s best intentions lead to corruption, a crony capitalism that plays favorites and invites the pay to play kind of bribery that is rampant in Washington today. 

CEOs of large corporations like Brad Anderson of Best Buy tell us that they benefit from government regulation.  Those regulations inhibit competition.  Large corporations have huge staffs and enough capital to wade through the morass and find ways to circumvent the law, ways to make the regulations work to their advantage.  Their smaller competitors get lost in the quicksand. 

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, enacted after the Enron scandal, did nothing to prevent Bernie Madoff from ripping off the public, but it stymied the small start-up companies that do the most to fuel our economic engine. Dodd Frank adds another 2, 319 pages to the mess and has been called by economists “The Lawyers and Consultants Full Employment act of 2010.”  So I guess Nancy Pelosi is correct.  Government can create jobs.

 Should business experience be a pre-requisite for politicians?  

Lynne Alexander: A Timeline

Lynne’s Spiritual Journey taken from a July 14, 2000 email

Hey, Mom, remember that time when we all went camping in Oak Creek Canyon.  We girls were horsing around in a little lake and a crazy man stood on a little hill above the lake  hollerin' at us to "Git outta mah watern' hole"? He had a stick in his hand that looked like a gun that he thrust in in the air with every word.  “Git outta mah watern’ hole!”  I'm including that in my timeline where I mark out memorable events in my life when I felt Divine Presence had lifted up, when I was REALLY in the palms of Jesus, my plethora of angels, God and the power of the Spirit. The timeline ends with an arrow because I'm still living my life. And I have many more blessings to add.  Here is what I’ve written so far.

             My time line begins with my birth, September 26, 1963.  Both my mother and I were lifted up.  It was a hard labor because I came out butt first and my mother tells me that at one point in the birthing process she died.  She floated painless through a screen of light that flashed peaceful images like flash cards in space, and then she felt herself thrust reluctantly back to reality, screaming, “Noooooooo!” And in that final push I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck three times. After they untangled me, I let out a scream that she can still hear.  I was further blessed to have been born intoa wonderfully fun and spirit filled family, seven uncles and aunts and what became a couple hundred, well, maybe a hundred cousins, a big fun family that laughed a lot..

                  In about 1965, I drank Drano.  I don’t remember doing it, but for a long time I had the scars on my tongue to prove it.  Mom was cleaning the bathroom while I was napping.  Because the drain was slow she took out the Drano, and then went to the kitchen to get a spoon.  She heard me scream and ran back to the bathroom.  I had awakened, gone to the bathroom, and decided that Drano might make a good snack.  God was with me because my mother calmly and coolly carried me to the kitchen and poured a glass of vinegar down my throat, followed by a glass of salad oil, gave me a glass of milk and called the doctor.  When she told the doctor what she had done, he said, “Exactly right. A little overboard, but good.  A couple of tablespoons would have done the trick.”  My mother always wondered how she knew what to do. 

Between 1965 and 1968 I got lost many times.  We lived in Metaline, Washington in a housing area called the sheep sheds, old WWII barracks moved into town to provide housing for the dam builders.  Once I wandered to a little lake all the way across town.  All the residents of the sheep sheds were out combing the town for me.  An old fisherman brought me to the grocery store and sat with me until a neighbor found me and took me home.

                February 22, 1968, my sister Laura was born.  We were racing down the freeway to the hospital.  Mom was in the back seat, screaming at the top of her lungs and I was SO WORRIED, MY MAMMA'S GONNA DIE!!!!! Turns out, my sister was hankerin' to get out, but she'd given mom so many false alarms, Mom didn't feel ready for the real one,  and now was afraid she'd give birth right there in the car

                       In April of 1969, I told my Mom, “Can You, Me and Laura go move away somewhere and leave daddy here?”  My father was a schizophrenic and he had been in one of his many tirades.  The next thing I knew my mom, my sister Laura and I were on a Greyhound bus headed for Flagstaff, Arizona. For many years, I felt guilty because I thought the divorce was my fault.    I don't remember that trip too well, but I do remember the dive in down town Los Angeles where we ate burgers while waiting for a bus transfer. It was a pretty scary place, and I got sick and puked all over my Mom. 

                         The next two years were golden.  We lived in a four generation household, my great-grandmother, my grandparents, my Uncle Layne and Aunt Monica.  Oh, how I loved her. She was 16, a tiny little girl filled with the Holy Spirit. She played a guitar and sang songs of praise all the time.  We had empty lots behind and just north of our house.  I constantly played outside, communing with God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, in the flowers, the trees, the bugs, the bees, the wind and the trees.  I and my friends left home at dawn and came home for meals. We built forts and played games.  It was golden.

                   In November of 1973, my mother remarried.  Richard had five children.  First the older two, Brenda and Dean, lived with us, but before long the younger ones came as well: Michelle, Jeanette, and Wayne, and then in 1976 Roark was born.  A gift from God because he became the glue that held us all together.  We all loved him so.  We sometimes called ourselves the Flagstaff Brady Bunch. 

                         God was also with me one day in 1977. I had just gotten off from work and gone to my Grandma's to pick up my little brother Roark. In those days, believe it or not, we didn’t use car seats and often held a small child on our laps.  I was cruising over Cedar Hill kissing Roark on the top of his precious little head.  All of a sudden, I felt like the surface I was on gave way and realized I'd veered off the road.  We were headed off the shoulder toward the trees. For some reason, I didn't panic, I felt very calm, and before I knew it, we were back on the road.  We both got home safe and sound. I know that if it was just me behind that wheel, neither of us would be here today

During the summer of 1978, my junior year of high school, I felt a deep, spiritual connection with God and the universe while working In the Grand Canyon with the Youth Conservation Corps. We cleared hiking trails, picked up garbage, floated down the Colorado to stop after stop.  It was glorious.  How I wish I'd done that again the NEXT year.  They even ASKED me to be a camp counselor, but pay wasn’t much and I was so bent on making money, that I took a job at A. J. Bayless. It was a depressing summer for me.

It was during that time that I lost my way with the Holy Spirit.  I went to college and then married Marty, a very witty, highly intelligent charmer, but an agnostic.  We moved to Tucson where he began working on his Doctorate in English and I entered the nursing program at the University of Arizona.

                  In 1988 I was the unfortunate pedestrian in a pedestrian/motor-vehicular collision: I was brought Dead On Arrival (DOA) to the University Medical Center. I spent the next three months in a deep coma, the following six months in a variety of hospitals and nursing homes. The doctors predicted that IF I lived, I would surely be a vegetable on life support.  Well I did live, and after 9 months in hospitals and nursing homes and 3 more months in rehab, and group homes, I finally went home to my loving husband who quickly decided her didn’t want to live with me anymore.

It was a painful experience, but I can now see that it, too, was a blessing.  The condo my mother eventually bought for me abuts a church parking lot, and across that lot at St. Marks Presbyterian I have made many new friends and joined a beautiful church family.  I sing in the choir and play in the bell choir. It is a spirit filled church and they help me to feel whole againl..  They also inspired me to create this time line.

              I know there are other events in my life I can and should add because I am blessed each and every day. There has been more than one occasion when I've returned home in the afternoon only to find a skillet left on a burner after having seasoned it that morning. I attribute to Divine Grace the fact that I avoided the many potential dangers that living alone provides and that I survived as well some of my ill-considered intimate relationships.  I praise God that I am STILL the ever-hopeful optimist! I've turned the paper over and extended the line to three more rows on that side of the paper and I will keep Jesus forever in my heart and not fail to record all my blessings.